Narya (Earth-616)

Snowbird
Name	Narya
Current Alias	Snowbird
Aliases	Nicknames: Ice Queen Other Aliases: Anne McKenzie, Anne McKenzie-Thompson
Affiliation and Relationships
Group Affiliation	Alpha Flight Alpha Flight (Space Program) RCMP Formerly God Squad The Flight
Relatives	Grandparents: A'akuluujjusi (maternal grandmother) Hodiak (maternal grandfather) Parents: Nelvanna (mother, deceased) Richard Easton (father, deceased) Michael Twoyoungmen (foster father) Siblings: Elizabeth Twoyoungmen (foster sister) Spouses: Doug Thompson (husband, deceased) Children: Unnamed son (deceased) Other Relatives: Nanuq (maternal uncle) Negafok (maternal uncle)
Marital Status	Widowed
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Female
Height	5′10″ (1.78 m), Variable
Weight	145 lbs (65.77 kg), Variable
Eyes	Eyeballs: White Irises: No Visible Blue (in human form)
Hair	Blonde
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Demigod(dess) (Inua-human hybrid)
Living Status	Alive
Reality	Earth-616
Place of Birth	Resolute Bay, Northwest Territories, Canada
Personal Information
Identity	Secret
Citizenship	Canadian
Occupation	Goddess of nature, Government operative; former RCMP officer, adventurer, RCMP records officer
Base of Operations	Alpha Flight Base Camp, Saint Elias Mountains, Canada
Creators and Appearances
Creators	John Byrne, Chris Claremont
First	X-Men #120 (January, 1979)
First	X-Men #120 (January, 1979)

Mortals. Heed the words of the earthly Champion of the Inua... the Gods of the North whose sacred lands you have entombed beneath obscenities of concrete and steel. All your weapons do is annoy me, but if you continue to defy me... I promise you will see my wrath.

—Snowbird[source]

History

Origins

Snowbird

Thousands of years ago, the seven Great Beasts roamed Earth unchecked, bringing destruction wherever they walked. In time, the Arctic Gods, the Inua, rose up against them. After a long struggle, the Inua banished the Beasts to a hellish nether dimension. However, the Beasts retaliated by sealing the Inua within their own paradisiacal realm of Quidlivun. The Inua foresaw that the barriers restraining the Beasts would weaken in the distant future, and that a champion would be required one who could move freely in the mortal world, yet still bear divine strength to oppose the Beasts. To conceive such a protector, the Inua chose Richard Easton, a mortal man, and commanded him to sire a child with Nelvanna, goddess of the Northern Lights. At first, Easton recoiled at the sight of her divine, ageless form, and refused. Turoq, the Shaper then altered Nelvanna's appearance to that of a beautiful blonde woman. Overcome by desire, Easton yielded. For him, a single night passed. In truth, nine years elapsed within Quidlivun, and when Easton was returned to Earth, the temporal distortion left him shattered and deranged by the knowledge of what had transpired. When Nelvanna gave birth, she summoned the shaman Michael Twoyoungmen, newly awakened to his mystical destiny as Shaman. He discovered the infant's unstable essence marked her as a transmorph her form fluctuating between mortal and divine. To stabilize her, Shaman bound her to Earth itself, never realizing that this act tethered her powers to Canada's soil. The divine birth produced a child who already resembled a year-old infant;Narya'.

Childhood

Shaman raised Narya in isolation in Banff National Park, teaching her mortal customs, ethics, and responsibility, all while guiding her through the first stages of her emerging powers. Though only a few years old, she matured rapidly, appearing to outsiders as a young woman. During a visit from Twoyoungmen's friends Heather Hudson and James Hudson, Narya attempted to conceal her true nature. James sensed she was destined for something greater, remarking that she would bear a different name. That night, Heather followed Narya into the woods and discovered her hunting in the form of an owl. Confronted, Twoyoungmen revealed Narya's divine origin. They invited Shaman and Narya to join Department H, where their gifts could be nurtured. Adopting the codename Snowbird, Narya entered the Flight program. There, she bonded with Wolverine, her ability to adopt animal forms giving her an affinity with his feral instincts and rages. When the proto-team faced Egghead's nuclear scheme, they prevailed but at the cost of Saint Elmo's life. Shaman raged at Hudson for exposing Snowbird to such danger, but Hudson countered that her purpose required these trials. Snowbird also witnessed Walter Langkowski's gamma experiment that transformed him into Sasquatch. Having felt the animal pull in her own shapeshifting, she warned Walter of the risks of surrendering to bestial instincts. As Department H expanded into Alpha Flight, Guardian created a mortal identity for Anne McKenzie, a records officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to help her balance her dual existence.

Alpha Flight

Alpha Flight

Alpha Flight's public debut came during the Calgary Stampede, when Department H dispatched them to retrieve Wolverine following his defection to the X-Men. Snowbird clashed directly with Storm, testing her animal forms against the mutant weather goddess, but the duel ended without resolution. Wolverine ultimately escaped with the X-Men, leaving Alpha Flight to confront their own uneasy alliances. Shortly afterward, Snowbird joined a mission in the Canadian wilderness, where Alpha Flight confronted the Wendigo. To destroy the curse, Snowbird transformed into a white wolverine and tore into the beast, consuming its flesh. The experience nearly overwhelmed her with the Wendigo's feral instincts. It was Wolverine's intervention that restored her humanity, and she collapsed into his arms, shaken but alive. When Department H was abruptly defunded by the Canadian government, Alpha Flight was disbanded. Days later, Snowbird felt the stirring of her divine purpose as the Great Beast Tundra returned to Earth, summoned by her mortal father Richard Easton, who died in the attempt. Alone, Snowbird confronted the massive elemental, but his command over northern creatures left her vulnerable. The original members of Alpha Flight rallied to her side, and together they defeated Tundra, solidifying their commitment to remain a team without government sponsorship.

Master of the World

Snowbird's gifts became critical when Alpha Flight faced the Master of the World, an ancient human transformed by alien technology. When the team was captured, she used her divine postcognition to retrace their trail, then assumed a polar bear form to follow their scent through the wilderness. Later, she infiltrated the Master's stronghold by transforming into a swarm of mosquitoes, slipping past defenses. She freed Marrina from captivity and fought alongside her teammates until the Master was defeated. Maintaining her RCMP cover identity, Snowbird soon faced suspicion from Chief Inspector Hamilton, who eventually confined her to a cell. But when her divine senses warned her of the Great Beast Kolomaq's emergence, Snowbird broke free. She confronted Kolomaq in the tundra, and though caught in his endless blizzard, she triggered a deadly avalanche that buried him beneath tons of ice and snow. Realizing her mortal guise had become too dangerous to maintain, Snowbird abandoned her RCMP identity.

Omega Flight

Alpha Flight's next crisis came when Guardian summoned the team to New York to oppose Omega Flight. Outside Canadian borders, Snowbird suddenly felt her power vanish and was nearly strangled to death by Diamond Lil. Only Shaman's intervention saved her, and he realized in horror that his earlier spell binding her essence to Earth had tied her directly to Canadian soil. Beyond Canada's borders, she was little more than mortal. The battle ended in tragedy when Guardian sacrificed himself, and Alpha Flight returned home in mourning. Back on native soil, Snowbird's powers returned, but Shaman warned her not to overextend herself. Despite her adult form, she was still no older than six years in true age, and her maturity was uneven. During this period, Snowbird grew close to RCMP officer Doug Thompson. When she revealed her true divine nature to him, he professed his love, startling her but also forging a new bond. Their union deepened, and through their intimacy she revealed her “True Fires,” a rare expression of her divine essence that few mortals had ever witnessed. Snowbird later recognized Elizabeth Twoyoungmen as the destined Talisman, kneeling before her and acknowledging her role as a new mystic champion. She fought alongside Elizabeth against Ranaq the Devourer, though she clashed bitterly with Shaman, who struggled to accept his daughter's place in the conflict. When Loki attempted to gift humanity with “evolution” at the cost of imagination, Snowbird's divine essence faltered. She faded from mortal memory, left near death in an isolated cave. Only Wolverine remembered her existence, seeking her out and keeping vigil until the spell was broken. Once Loki's gift was rejected, Snowbird revived, though she parted ways with Logan once more. When the Inua revealed that Tanaraq had usurped Walter Langkowski's body as Sasquatch, Snowbird was forced into a terrible choice. She assumed the form of a white Sasquatch and slew him by tearing out his heart. Alpha Flight pursued Walter's soul into the Beasts' realm, where Somon the Artificer betrayed them. Snowbird killed Somon in retribution, and the team rescued Walter's essence. With the Great Beasts temporarily defeated, Snowbird declared her original mission fulfilled and ascended back to Quidlivun.

Return and Marriage

Though she had departed to the realm of her people, Snowbird eventually returned to Earth. Choosing love over ascension, she resumed her life with Doug Thompson, and the two were secretly wed. Despite her domestic choice, she remained tied to Alpha Flight and continued to answer their call. Her loyalty was tested when she was captured by Delphine Courtney's Omega Flight. Shaman faced a terrible dilemma, forced to prioritize Snowbird's life over his own daughter Elizabeth's. He chose Snowbird, rescuing her at great personal cost. Not long after, Snowbird fought the Hulk while transformed into a white Sasquatch. Though the battle tested her limits, she delivered a stirring speech that rekindled Alpha Flight's resolve and persuaded the Canadian government to reinstate official support for the team. Her marriage with Doug Thompson deepened further when she learned she was pregnant. However, her hybrid child grew at an unnatural rate, and the Inua, her divine family, refused to intervene. With Doctor Strange's guidance, Alpha Flight prepared for the child's birth. But the sorcerer Pestilence corrupted the infant, possessing Snowbird's Sasquatch form and twisting the newborn against her. In anguish, Snowbird was forced to slay her own child, and in doing so, she too perished. Together, her soul, her child, and Doug Thompson's spirit ascended into Paradise.

Death, Desecration and Resurrection

Snowbird's sacrifice left a profound void in Alpha Flight. Yet even in death, her struggles were not over. Pestilence, unwilling to relinquish his prize, desecrated her grave. He reanimated Snowbird's corpse and attempted to wield her divine form as his vessel. Sasquatch ultimately defeated him, and, to preserve his own life, he merged his soul with Snowbird's body, reshaping it into a male simulacrum. Snowbird's spirit remained active in the afterlife. She guided Elizabeth Twoyoungmen during her trials, urging her to reclaim the Talisman of Power and embrace her mystic legacy. Later, Snowbird's essence aided Walter in reshaping her altered form, allowing him to maintain existence while tethered to her divine remains. Years later, Alpha Flight discovered Snowbird alive within an A.I.M. facility. Scientists had captured her, seeking to exploit her as a nexus of both science and magic. A.I.M. considered her a unique specimen capable of bridging divine essence with genetic manipulation. Though they attempted to clone her, their experiments failed. Freed by Alpha Flight, Snowbird returned to the team, her resurrection confirmed though unexplained. Snowbird resumed active service with Alpha Flight. She joined forces with Generation X during one of A.I.M.'s renewed schemes, lending her shapeshifting and divine power to the young mutants. Later, Alpha Flight faced the sorcerer Mauvais, who sought to unleash chaos upon Canada. Snowbird transformed into a Wendigo to fight him, a dangerous gambit that nearly consumed her, but with Alpha Flight's aid, Mauvais was banished.

Possession and the Plodex

Snowbird's trials continued when she was possessed by a demonic shaman who infiltrated Department H. Her divine form was twisted until Shaman freed her, purging the malign influence. Not long after, Alpha Flight was captured by the alien Plodex. Learning of the Plodex's intent to restore their people, Snowbird and her teammates chose to accompany the Plodex eggs back to their homeworld rather than doom another species to extinction. Eventually returning to Earth, Snowbird surprised her comrades by marrying Yukon Jack, a warrior prince. She retired briefly to his homeland of Kemteron, but their marriage soon collapsed under cultural differences, and she returned once again to Alpha Flight.

God Squad

Snowbird

Snowbird declined to join the government-sanctioned Omega Flight after Alpha Flight's massacre at the hands of Michael Pointer, the man whose borrowed mutant energy had killed her teammates, attempted to lead the new group, Snowbird confronted him directly. She denounced him for his role in their destruction and warned him never to set foot in Canada again. When the Skrulls launched their invasion of Earth, Snowbird was recruited into the God Squad, a coalition of divine beings assembled to oppose the Skrull gods. Within Nightmare's realm she confronted her survivor's guilt and the many lives lost under her watch. She found unexpected solace in Hercules, with whom she briefly became lovers. On the battlefield, Snowbird revealed the terrifying scope of her divine power. She assumed the form of Neooqtoq the Ravager, one of the Great Beasts, and used that monstrous shape to tear through the enslaved Skrull deities. In the final confrontation, she helped drive the Demogorge's spine through Kly'bn, the Eternal Skrull God, ensuring Earth's survival.

Chaos War

Snowbird continued her divine duties in the North, confronting gods and monsters in the remote reaches of Alaska. She battled Herateq and Tiamaq, reinforcing her place as a guardian of Canada's wilderness. When Hercules died during later conflicts, she attended his funeral, mourning her fallen ally and briefly recalling their bond. When the Chaos King threatened all creation, the Inua gods were slain in Quidlivun. Snowbird survived only because Nelvanna and Hodiak cast her out of their realm at the last moment. On Earth, she rejoined Alpha Flight, fighting alongside both the living and the resurrected dead. Snowbird froze the Great Beasts long enough for the Chaos King's army to destroy them, and when the multiverse was restored, Alpha Flight endured, united once again as Canada's champions.

Unity Party

After the Chaos War, Snowbird resumed her human guise of Anne McKenzie within the RCMP. She crossed paths with the manipulative Purple Woman during Gary Cody's rise to political power. As Cody's Unity Party seized control of Canada, Alpha Flight was branded traitors and forced into hiding. Snowbird fought against Alpha Strike, the Unity Party's sponsored team, while also contending with the revelation that the Master of the World was manipulating Canadian politics from the shadows. Together, Alpha Flight exposed the Master's plot and restored their standing with the public.

Later Missions

Snowbird was later captured by a pantheon of Mayan gods who sought to drain her divine essence. She was eventually freed by allies of the Hulk. She re-joined the X-Men during a global Wendigo plague, bowing before Tanaraq in a bid to end the curse. Tanaraq struck her down, but with Alpha Flight and the X-Men united, the Wendigo spell was broken. With the re-establishment of the Alpha Flight Space Program, Snowbird continued to protect Earth and Canada alike. She aided her teammates against the Reavers, clashed with the Champions, and fought to prevent the Master of the World from stealing the very soul of the North. Alongside Old Man Logan, she battled alien incursions in Nova Scotia, and with Talisman she freed the tormented spirit of her mortal father Richard Easton in Nunavut.

Fall of X

During the mutant massacre at the third Hellfire Gala, anti-mutant extremists of Orchis left Earth's mutant population dead, captured, or scattered. Pressured by the Canadian government, Snowbird and Alpha Flight were tasked with rounding up mutants across the country. In truth, they secretly protected their kin, helping Northstar, Aurora, Feedback, and Fang shepherd mutants to safety aboard Alpha Flight's decommissioned space station. From there, Marrina and Walter Langkowski guided them to the Shi'ar Throneworld of Chandilar. For their defiance, Snowbird and her teammates were branded traitors. They were arrested, incarcerated, and left to face uncertain futures as both gods and governments judged them.

Attributes

Power Grid

Powers

• Inua/Human Hybrid Physiology: As the daughter of a Inua goddess and a mortal man, Narya possesses abilities that set her apart from the rest of humanity.

• • Arctic Animal Shape-shifting: Snowbird is a shapeshifter able to take the form of any animals native to Northern Canada. Snowbird is able to change into a white-skinned or white-furred version of any creature native to the arctic. She can also transform into a female human being; her true face is not human. When she transforms into an animal smaller in mass and volume than a human being, she becomes a human-sized version of that animal. If she transforms into an animal larger in mass and volume than a human being, she gains mass from an unidentified mystical source. Snowbird gains the special attributes of the animal she takes the form of, such as the enhanced vision of an owl. Snowbird's personality is overlaid with the traits and behavior of the animal she has taken the form of. Over time, the animal's passions risk overwhelming her own self-control. If Snowbird stays in one form for an extended period of time, she risks having the animal's psyche permanently overprinted on her personality. Creatures she has transformed into include a swarm of mosquitoes, a sperm whale, a polar bear, a giant arctic owl, Tanaraq (the true form of Sasquatch), a Wendigo, etc. She even transformed into a wolverine and beat Wendigo by ripping him to shreds. She can even turn into extinct animals like dinosaurs.
  • Flight: Snowbird is able to fly in her base form without having to change her form.
  • Healing: Snowbird can create a healing aura around herself to enable her to recover from injuries. AIM determined that her body has a form of enhanced cellular rejuvenation.
  • Superhuman Strength: In her base form she has superhuman strength, able to lift approximately 10 tons. However, when she transforms into an animal she can take the strength and abilities of whatever she transforms into. So she can take all the strength of a Wendigo, or even the Great Beast Tanaraq, which grants her enough strength to lift 90 tons.
  • Superhuman Durability: Snowbird possesses vast resistant to damage even in her human form, and is completely unbothered by assault rifle fire.
  • Postcognition: Snowbird possesses the ability to see into the recent past. Through her mind's eye, time literally rewinds itself, and she can perceive events that have transpired within the past six hours in her current location. She can replay events in an area, but only she is capable of seeing them.
  • Compel Others: Snowbird possesses the mental ability to compel others to aid her in her struggle against the Great Beasts.
  • Mystical Sense and Resistance: Being a mystical creature herself, Snowbird can pick up and sense various mystical activities from various places. She could detect the presence of magical energies or the breaching of a magical field. She can also resist teleportation, or she can opt to be teleported to place of her own choosing.

Abilities

• Hand-to-Hand Combat: Snowbird is a fair hand-to-hand combatant, having been trained by both Puck and Wolverine.
• Mysticism: She has all the knowledge and wisdom of the gods of the Arctic, but due to her young age she doesn't know how to fully use it, as she is technically only a few years old despite her adult looks.

Weaknesses

• Inability to Leave Canada: (formerly) Shaman's spell cast at Narya's birth bound her lifeforce within the borders of Canada. Originally Snowbird weakened rapidly if she left the boundaries of Canada and prolonged absence could have been fatal. After her death and rebirth, this flaw seems to have been corrected, as has been proven by her extended stay in space with the Plodex.

Paraphernalia

Transportation

As a member of Alpha Flight, Snowbird frequently traveled aboard the Alpha Flight Omnijet

Trivia

• According to Narya, her primary blond-haired human form is kin to that which her divine mother, Nelvanna, took when she appeared to Narya's mortal father so he might procreate with her.

See Also

• 141 appearance(s) of Narya (Earth-616)
• 16 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of Narya (Earth-616)
• 22 minor appearance(s) of Narya (Earth-616)
• 3 mention(s) of Narya (Earth-616)
• 4 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Narya (Earth-616)
• 137 image(s) of Narya (Earth-616)
• 4 quotation(s) by or about Narya (Earth-616)
• 1 victim(s) killed by Narya (Earth-616)

Links and References

• Narya on Marvel.com
• Narya on Wikipedia.org